Abstract"In several of his analyses, Talcott Parsons describes the establishment of modern societies as a differentiation process across spheres of mutual recognition. In this paper, I use Parsons’ social theory of recognition to examine features of recent social conflicts. I begin with Parsons’ description of the struggles for recognition that took place during his lifetime in the highly industrialized societies of the west (1). I then use Parsons’ view of normatively ordered recognition conflicts to point out societal trends that led, in the final third of the twentieth century, to a gradual undermining of the pacification structures postulated by Parsons (2). An initial outcome of this apparent disintegration I describe as a “barbarization” of social conflict. By this I mean a state of society where struggles for social recognition escalate and become anomic because resolution can no longer be found in the existing systemic spheres of negotiation (3). This paper shows the importance of the term recognition to social theory by following Parsons’ theory in analyzing structural transformations that are currently emerging in response to social conflict."

Axel Honneth is Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe University and Director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. Later this year, Honneth will join the Philosophy Department at Columbia University.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

On What Matters is a major work in moral philosophy. It is the long-awaited follow-up to Derek Parfit's 1984 book Reasons and Persons, one of the landmarks of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons, rationality, and normativity, and a critical examination of three systematic moral theories - Kant's ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism - leading to his own ground-breaking synthetic conclusion. Along the way he discusses a wide range of moral issues, such as the significance of consent, treating people as a means rather than an end, and free will and responsibility. Parfit's book is dedicated to Thomas Nagel and T. M. Scanlon.

Contents

VOLUME ONE

Introduction, Samuel Scheffler

PrefaceSummary

Part I: Reasons

- Normative Concepts

- Objective Theories

- Subjective Theories

- Further Arguments

- Rationality

- Morality

- Moral ConceptsPart II: Principles

- Possible Consent

- Merely As A Means

- Respect And Value

- Free Will And Desert

Part III: Theories

- Universal Laws

- What If Everyone Did That?

- Impartiality

- Contractualism

- Consequentialism

- Conclusions

Appendices A-C

VOLUME TWO

Summary

Part IV: Commentaries- Hiking The Range, Susan Wolf- Humanity As An End In Itself, Allen Wood- A Mismatch of Methods, Barbara Herman- How I Am Not A Kantian, T. M. ScanlonPart V: ResponsesPart VI: Normativity

- Analytical Naturalism And Subjectivism

- Non-Analytical Naturalism

- The Triviality Objection

- Naturalism And Nihilism

- Non-Cognitivism And Quasi-Realism

- Normativity And Truth

- Normative Truths

- Metaphysics

- Epistemology

- Rationalism

- Agreement

- Nietzsche

- What Matters Most

Appendices D-J

Various draft manuscripts of the book have been available online. See an early draft, entitled "Climbing the Mountain", here (pdf, 310 pages), and a draft from December 2008 here (pdf, 750 pages). Five chapters in Part II and Part III are adapted from Parfit's Tanner Lectures in 2002: "What We Could Rationally Will" (pdf).

Monday, May 23, 2011

Abstract:This chapter provides an introductory overview of Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of law. A survey of his main theses concerning law is organized according to three broad perspectives: 1) history and sociology of law, 2) philosophy of law, and 3) theory of legal adjudication.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Though many legal theorists are familiar with Jürgen Habermas's work addressing core legal concerns, they are not necessarily familiar with his earlier writings in philosophy and social theory. Because Habermas's later work on law invokes, without significant explanation, the whole battery of concepts developed in earlier phases of his career, even otherwise sympathetically inclined legal theorists face significant obstacles in evaluating his insights.

A similar difficulty faces those outside the legal academy who are familiar with Habermas's earlier work. While they readily comprehend Habermas's basic social-theoretical concepts, without special legal training they have difficulty reliably assessing his recent engagement with contemporary legal thought. This new work bridges the gap between legal experts and those without special legal training, critically assessing the attempt of an unquestionably preeminent philosopher and social theorist to engage the world of law.

Contents

Introduction

1. Basic Concepts in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action2. Habermas’s “Reconstruction” of Modern Law3. Discourse Theory and the Theory and Practice of Adjudication4. System, Lifeworld, and Habermas’s “Communication Theory of Society”5. After Between Facts and Norms: Religion in the Public Square, Multiculturalism, and the “Postnational Constellation”

Excerpt:"Anyone who has read Habermas knows how daunting his writing can be. Aside from the notorious density and abstractness of his prose, there is the challenge posed by the sheer scope of his undertaking. Quite simply, he stands out among our great contemporary thinkers for having dared to write a system of philosophy that crosses both disciplinary and thematic boundaries. In addition to this challenge, his thought has undergone several major permutations and countless minor ones over the past half century, as evidenced by the thirty some odd books and collections he has authored.

So we are truly fortunate that Acumen chose to include a book on Habermas in its exceptional Key Concepts series. These volumes are designed to provide synoptic introductions to important thinkers. This volume, edited by the well-known Habermas translator and scholar, Barbara Fultner, is a fine addition to the series. The essays included in this volume are written by eminent specialists in their respective fields, many of whom studied with Habermas. They are uniformly of high quality, and most are written at a level that upper-division undergraduates should find accessible. Furthermore, although most of them present a sympathetic case for Habermas's ambitious undertaking, they do not shy away from noting potential weaknesses. In short, this is about as complete an account of Habermas's social philosophy as one might possibly expect from a modestly sized volume.

(....) this volume will likely remain a standard source for students of Habermas, who will appreciate its overall evenhandedness and comprehensiveness."

This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture,' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations."

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equality?

The explosion of philosophical interest in such questions has been fuelled by increased focus on individual responsibility in political debates. Political philosophers, especially egalitarians, have responded to such developments by attempting to map out the proper place for responsibility in theories of justice. Responsibility and Distributive Justice both reflects on these recent developments in normative political theory and moves the debate forwards. Written by established experts in the field and emerging scholars, it contains essays previously unpublished in academic books or journals.

The conference aims to explore the role of justification and explanation as central aspects of rationality. These topics will be discussed in terms of selected issues in theoretical and practical philosophy. The first part of the conference (Friday, June 3) focusses on questions concerning ultimate justification in theoretical philosophy (talks by Della Rocca, Houlgate, Stange a.o.). The second part (Saturday, June 4) is dealing with the role of explanation and justification with regard to agency and practical norms (talks by Brandom, Bittner, Dancy a.o.).

May 30: "Conceptual Realism and the Semantic Possibility of Knowledge".May 31 "Representation and the Experience of Error".June 1: "Determining Meaning and Truth: The Emergence of the New, True Object".

In this series of Hegel lectures, Brandom is going to present new texts on the "Introduction" of Hegel's Phenomenology for the first time.

The interview took place on April 6, 2011, in Berlin at a meeting on "Europe and the re-discovery of the German nation-state", arranged by the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). See my post on the meeting and Habermas's speech - "Ein Pakt für oder gegen Europa?" - here.